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Legacy Windchill

aachanta
13-Aquamarine

Legacy Windchill

Hi All,

How do we migrate/upgrade data from legacy systems in Windchill ? Can anyone please let me know about it once.

Can anyone please answer the below questions

1.) Say for suppose if we wish to migrate/upgrade from Windchill Versions which are less than 9.x (say Windchill 8 or 6 or even less than that ) to a Windchill which is 10.x version. How will we be doing that ?

2.) And how do people used to migrate or upgrade or do any customizations before Windchill 9.1 ? Like from Windchill 6 to Windchill 8 or from Windchill 8 to Windchill 9. So is it possible ? If yes how was that done ?

3.) Is there any documentation or guide for Legacy Windchill Migrations/Upgrade or any other development like customizations to the 10.x version ? If yes please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Best Regards,

Aditya Achanta

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions
doehr
1-Newbie
(To:aachanta)

Welcome to my life for the past few months trying to figure that out.

There is a large-scale data import and export function in Windchill to allow for large data migration, however it does not support migrations across releases (i.e. between a PDM 9 and PDM 10 system). This does kind of make sense given how many fundamental core changes can be made to the definitions of objects. There is a property buried somewhere either in the menus or on a property file on the server (sorry that I don't remember where) that will prevent an initial popup from flat out blocking you from doing a cross-release import by setting it to Yes to allow cross-release imports, however then the problem comes with data matching. There's the option of using a "mapping file" to help smooth over the import and unfortunately I don't have experience in writing those. But a good mapping file combined with that setting to allow cross-release imports should work.

Other option: Upgrade the older system first to match what you want to import the data into and then do the export-import. You still need to be careful right down to the last attribute. In the one I tried (i.e. bashed my face against a desk for a while trying to figure it out) not only were we trying to import data from an older Windchill iteration, they were in Italy. And a number of their data object attributes were in Italian. Which the import function couldn't find matches for in our own system. Which I usually only found out after an import attempt roughly one at a time since it throws the import after it finds a single problem.

....Want...to...crush...bricks....with...bare...fists...

I suggest the upgrade first then import later option.

Daryl

View solution in original post

5 REPLIES 5
doehr
1-Newbie
(To:aachanta)

Welcome to my life for the past few months trying to figure that out.

There is a large-scale data import and export function in Windchill to allow for large data migration, however it does not support migrations across releases (i.e. between a PDM 9 and PDM 10 system). This does kind of make sense given how many fundamental core changes can be made to the definitions of objects. There is a property buried somewhere either in the menus or on a property file on the server (sorry that I don't remember where) that will prevent an initial popup from flat out blocking you from doing a cross-release import by setting it to Yes to allow cross-release imports, however then the problem comes with data matching. There's the option of using a "mapping file" to help smooth over the import and unfortunately I don't have experience in writing those. But a good mapping file combined with that setting to allow cross-release imports should work.

Other option: Upgrade the older system first to match what you want to import the data into and then do the export-import. You still need to be careful right down to the last attribute. In the one I tried (i.e. bashed my face against a desk for a while trying to figure it out) not only were we trying to import data from an older Windchill iteration, they were in Italy. And a number of their data object attributes were in Italian. Which the import function couldn't find matches for in our own system. Which I usually only found out after an import attempt roughly one at a time since it throws the import after it finds a single problem.

....Want...to...crush...bricks....with...bare...fists...

I suggest the upgrade first then import later option.

Daryl

aachanta
13-Aquamarine
(To:doehr)

Hi Daryl,

That was indeed a good explanation. Thanks a lot.

But can I really get any other inputs apart from this ? Any further inputs like some manual or guide ? Kindly let me know about it once.

Thanks and Regards,

Aditya Achanta

doehr
1-Newbie
(To:aachanta)

Believe me, I want to know the answer to that too, especially on writing the mapping file. I wasn't able to find such a guide either, we're still internally debating how to handle getting this Italian data into our system.

Daryl

The problem requires someone with both significant database architecture, database management, and Windchill-specific knowledge. It takes between 2 and 5 years to learn each of those. It is better to find a company that does the migrations/hire PTC to do the migration. It may require two segments - the first is to determine what data and customizations you want to keep or develop and a second segment to perform the migration and database testing to see that it works.

How do we test for databse ? Can you please share some usecases or scenarios ? 

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